Google has pledged to bring free wireless Internet access to its home town of Mountain View and is partnering with Earthlink to build a city-wide WiFi network in San Francisco.
Q How is the Mountain View project going?
A It’s on track to be completed by June. We’ll do a phased rollout to a diverse but limited set of folks . . . to make sure it’s ready for Prime Time.
The city is 99 percent rolled out (in terms of equipment). It’s hard to say exactly when the service is going to be made available to the broader (citywide) group of residents.
Q Do you intend to use the network to sell advertising?
A This network isn’t being built with a driver in mind of, “How are we going to be delivering advertising.” Our individual product builders aren’t on the hook to deliver on a return on investment. Google has a very non-traditional product development process. It starts with the user and says, “What’s broken about the user experience?”
The team here wasn’t thinking about how to create a new revenue stream. We were saying, folks in the U.S. get nowhere near the broadband speeds of Europe and Asia. There are not many content or applications that take advantage of mobility outside the home. We think it would be neat to solve that problem.
It’s not advertising that’s driving this. There’s a lot more interesting challenges. What kind of devices do people want to use on it? Laptops, Treos, Nintendo DSs? Are we bringing more people onto the Internet? Are we reaching people who didn’t have access to the Internet before?
Certainly a network like this could be a great vehicle for delivering advertising. Let’s say you’re out and about and you’re looking for a place to eat, you go out and pull out your WiFi mobile device. You can get listings, make reservations.
(Local merchants have said) they see this as an opportunity to provide local and extremely neighborhood-relevant content and advertising. There could be neighborhood-focused blogs.
Even the imagination of all the engineers at Google can’t compete with all the citizens of Mountain View.
Q What have you learned from the Mountain View and San Francisco projects?
A We’ve learned a lot on the technological side and on the community side. Traditionally when we develop products at Google we can do so from the comfort of our labs. Here we really have to be deeply integrated into the community. It’s been fun. We started having lunches with folks from across the spectrum. It’s been a really enriching.
One of the things that I’ve been really pleasantly surprised by is how users feel like owners and stakeholders in Google. . . . Google users feel like it’s their Google, and they have a deep personal relationship with Google.
Q Can you address the concerns that privacy advocates have raised about how personal information could be gathered and used on a citywide wireless network?
A Earthlink is in negotiations with San Francisco. We won’t have a contract between Google and San Francisco. We’re going to be an anchor tenant in the Earthlink network. . . . The Board of Supervisors is providing a feedback loop to ensure the contract and ultimately the city and Earthlink agree (on contract terms). So there’s a lot of active dialogue there.
On the privacy side, . . . Google WiFi requires absolutely minimal information to log on. Much less than other Internet access services. For a network like this you need a user name, an e-mail address and a password and that’s it. We instituted this to prevent spamming and automated bots. Once (users) get on the network they’re free to go wherever they like.
Google has always been a vociferous advocate for people’s privacy. We’re comfortable that this network offers the highest level of privacy to its users.
Q How does Google know where users are located within a city and how is that information used?
A If a user logs onto a network the network will know if a user is associated with a particular node. There are about 30 per square mile. For example, let’s say there’s a laptop associated with this particular radio node. Based on that location, (Google might know) that laptop is on Castro Street in Mountain View. The network is not aware of who that person is. . . . The content will never be served according to anyone’s identity.
At the end of the day, we have the deepest commitment to the privacy of our users.
